(Thematic section edited by Davide De Grazia, Giorgio Valentino Federici, Severino Saccardi, Marco Salucci)
This thematic section focuses on the highly topical issues of digital transition and AI with regards to Data protection and democratic welfare. Such pivotal and controversial topic is addressed by the authors through a multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral approach and a multilateral perspective ranging from anthropology and socio-political studies to legal, technological and environmental studies. A particular attention is devoted to the impact of new technologies on the realm of information, on the dialectic truth-falsehood, as well as on creativity and subjectivity in the artistic and cultural fields. A special focus is placed on the role of the European Union, which AI Act, is the first attempt on a global scale to regulate applications of AI. Opening up unprecedented (and positive) horizons, while also revealing potential risks, which are currently difficult to measure, associated with an unscrupulous use of its enormous potential, the extraordinary features of AI prompt us to reflect. The challenge facing the EU consists in combining a legislation aimed at safeguarding its citizens’ rights, threatened by a opaque management of new technologies, with the unavoidable necessity of coping openly and without bureaucratic constraints with the epochal challenge of the digital transition.
